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Month: January 2014

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For some reason I’m just super excited about the bone broth I made. Apparently my exuberance was a little too much for my husband- (I sorta kinda had to show him how beautiful and gelatinous it turned out. He may have rolled his eyes a little.) Anyway. Bone broth! Yaaay! I first heard about bone broth, when my doctor told me I should take it for my gut. She was like, ‘go to the butcher and ask for soup bones then cook them down to make a gelatin broth. And drink it or use it in soups. Often or daily. It will heal your gut and some of your other problems will go away when your gut is healed.’ Those are not her exact words, but that is the message I remember. Thats been a while ago, but I finally made broth. I’m not going to go into detail of all the benefits of bone broth, but I will say this. Health is in the gut. Happiness is part of a healthy gut. (I have also learned that constipation makes people grouchy. But when I see grouchy people I don’t assume they are constipated)

My mother-in-law orders free range, hormone free chickens from Illinois. They arrive already butchered, but never frozen in nice bags with 5 birds in a bag. When I get them, I separate the pieces as I want them and vacuum seal them and they are ready to freeze. (Actually the man packaged this batch. Wyatt wanted to be in the middle of everything, so I entertained him.) After packaging and freezing 25 already butchered chickens, I had backs, necks, wing tips, and the breast cartilage from the affore mentioned birds to make broth with. I froze those until I was ready for them.

I read so many blogs about bone broth before i started. Some were informational, some were educational, and some were elememtary. I figured its pretty hard to ruin broth, so i used bits an pieces from several blogs. I like these directions best.

I coarse chopped 2 onions, 2 celery bunches, 3 leeks and a bundle of parsley. Carrots are traditional, but I opted those out.

Some recipes called for certain amounts of water, but I wanted this to be condensed. I didn’t have a large stock pot, so I used a roaster, a kettle, and a large and a small crock pot. I filled them with chicken and veggies , salted and peppered them then put a tablespoon of vinegar and water in til they were almost covered.

I started the roaster and the small crockpot at 3 am. I turned the crockpot on low and put the roaster on the oven at 200. At 9 the next morning I started taking the meat off. I still had 3 bags of bones left, so I put some more uncooked bones into the roaster. I wish now I would have just had 2 big pots and would have just added uncooked bones to the broth. After I picked the meat off, I roasted the bones in the oven at 350. (The roaster simmered on 2 burners while I used the oven.) You don’t really want it to boil, just simmer.

The bones roasted for about an hour, then I added them back to the broth and cooked everything til you could crush the bones with your fingers. Gina and her children came to help.

Having some one to play with wyatt was nice! We used paint strainers from Lowes to strain the broth. That was Gina’s brilliant idea.

It was freezing outside so I set the broth out to cool quickly and separate. After I put wyatt to bed I took the fat off and put the gelatin in 1 cup containers and 3 cup bags to freeze.

The batch that I had put uncooked bones into broth turned out very thick and tasty! The roasted bones gave it nice color too. The rest was lighter and slipped off the spoon, it wasn’t as thick. After seeing what real chicken broth looks like, I doubt I will buy from the store again. I can add my own water to this as needed.

The difference in the two batches.

It made 25 cup of gelatin, 2 jars and the green container of fat. (I don’t know how I will use the fat yet.) And 2 containers of chicken to add to soups or make food for wyatt. I was happy with the results of my first attempt to make broth.

I really hope you will try it some time and enjoy the goodness of bone broth.